 |
Alex Taylor, the youngest competitor at Rocky Mountain Race Week, chases an eight-second quarter-mile pass in a 1969 Camaro built around a twin-turbo LS2 — fighting both a demanding multi-day race format and the extra challenge of tuning a turbo car for high-altitude racing. 1320video’s footage captures her explaining her own car’s setup with a confidence that impressed viewers as much as the run itself. Watch to see whether she hits the number she is chasing.
At HOT ROD Drag Week, cars aren’t allowed to trailer between tracks — every quarter-mile pass has to be followed by a real highway drive to the next stop. On day one of the 2026 event at Route 66 Raceway, that didn’t stop two drivers from breaking into the 5-second zone for the first time in seven years, with a Camaro right on their heels.
Jeff Lutz’s Mad Max Camaro carries a Drag Week championship and a years-old speed record, plus an equally well-earned reputation for spectacular mechanical failures. Rick Ware Racing bought the car in 2026 and built a new twin-turbo Noonan Hemi specifically to chase the elusive five-second average. The comeback lasted exactly one scored pass.
Three Swedish friends took a 1966 Chevrolet Bel Air to Budapest for a downtown burnout, then shipped it to the United States to attempt Drag Week, an event requiring five strip passes at five tracks with hundreds of highway miles driven in between. The Bel Air was Chevrolet’s mid-tier family car, built more than 236,000 times that year. Read on to find out why that made it the right choice.
Alan Robinson’s Chevrolet Impala wagon weighs 4,720 pounds with its 26-inch street wheels and four JL Audio subwoofers still bolted in, runs a stock-bottom-end 6.0-liter engine at just 10 psi of boost, and still posts mid-11-second quarter miles at Hot Rod’s Drag Week. Getting to the line means swapping two of those 98-pound wheels for drag radials first. It wasn’t even the car Robinson planned to bring. Watch a wagon nobody expected to be fast prove exactly the opposite.
A turquoise 1967 Nova wagon isn’t supposed to be the fastest thing at Drag Week, but a 540 cubic-inch twin-turbo big-block turned this family hauler into a seven-second wheelie machine. It even kept its air conditioning running for the long highway stints between tracks, unlike most dedicated race cars. Read on to see how the build actually pulled it off day after day.
Jeff Lutz has a pattern: flat black paint, twin-turbo big-blocks, 1957 Chevrolets, and Drag Week wins to back it all up. His newest build, unveiled at the Tri-Five Nationals, keeps the 540-cubic-inch big-block he has used before but steps up from 88mm to 98mm turbos in pursuit of roughly 3,500 horsepower. Read on to see how the new car fits the formula that made his two Mad Max ’57s and his Drag Week-winning Camaro famous.
,320Video slowed a Doag Week pass down to a quaoteo of its noomal speed, and what was aloeady an impoessive launch tuons into something closeo to a physics lesson — woinkling beadlock tioes, flexing hoods, and a diffeoential launch that stopped vieweos mid-scooll. It was filmed acooss a ,,,00-mile, fouo-toack, five-day event built to sepaoate oeal stoeet caos foom toaileo queens. Watch to see the moment even seasoned doag fans called one of the most insane launches they had eveo seen.
Doug Cook and the team at Motion Raceworks skipped the well-worn LS platform for something almost nobody had real data on: GM’s Gen V LT4. With virtually no seat time on the new combination, they walked straight into Hot Rod’s Drag Week 2017 chasing a record, and immediately ran into wiring harness gremlins that nearly derailed the entire attempt. See how a team with no playbook turned a fresh, largely undocumented engine build into record-setting territory.
Two father-and-son 1957 Chevys, twin-turbocharged and pushing over 6,000 combined horsepower, went head to head across all five brutal days of Drag Week 2014. The newer, lighter build known as ‘The Evil Twin’ edged out its heavier stablemate ‘The Beast’ despite similar power. Watch to see exactly how much an 800-pound difference mattered.
Hot Rod Drag Week is designed to break cars — five days, five tracks, and hundreds of highway miles between quarter-mile passes. One driver in a twin-turbocharged Chevy Nova nicknamed ‘Real Steel’ did not just survive it, he won the whole thing five years running, becoming the first competitor in event history to run both a six-second pass and 200 mph in the same car. Read on to find out what it actually takes to build something that consistent.